Be Still Our Childhood: Archie Andrews Is Going to Die

Be still our childhood.

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If you had trouble coming to terms with the death of a character we'd only known for one season on How I Met Your Mother, get ready to have another, more deeply ingrained pop culture icon to pass. Jon Goldwater, the CEO of Archie Comics, just revealed that America's most-beloved redhead will die in the penultimate issue of the "Life With Archie" series. The final issue, which detail how the other residents of Riverdale are processing life after Archie, will appear one week later.

Goldwater wouldn't reveal much about Archie's death besides that fact that he will "go out a hero." "He dies saving the life of a friend, and does it in his usual selfless way. Archie has always been a representation of us—the best of us. Our strengths and our faults," he tells CNN.

As much as it warms our heart to hear that Archie is selfless enough to sacrifice his own life to save a friend's, there are just some fictional characters from the halcyon days of our youth whose ultimate demise we'd rather remain a mystery. What's next… we learn that fates of all the Muppet Babies? Find out that Donatello from TMNT suffers from a fatal heart attack at 52? No thank you.

Comics about the gang in high school will keep being published, but knowing that Archie is dead sort of casts a pall over reading them, the same way it would to rematch How I Met Your Mother knowing what we do now about Tracy McConnell. Stop playing with our emotions, things that are supposed to be escapism! There are just some characters that can remain frozen and ageless in a specific time and place, and Archie Andrews at Riverdale High is one of them.